Even before Eli Baxter Springs arrived in New York City from the Deep South, he had had a fascinating life and career. He was born at his grandfather's Georgia home, Cornucopia Plantation, on February 1, 1852, to Colonel Andrew Baxter Springs, who served in the Confederate Army. As a young man, Springs founded a small grocery in Charlotte, North Carolina that grew to be one of the largest retail grocery firms in the state. He turned to railroads, eventually becoming president of the Atlantic, Tennessee & Ohio Railroad and director in the Southern Railway Company.
Eli Baxter Springs, from The Lineage and Tradition of the Family of John Springs III (copyright expired)
He went on to be a substantial cotton grower and trader, a director of the Charlotte Construction Company, and Mayor of Charlotte from 1897 to 1899. Never married, he relocated to New York in 1903 and became a partner in the cotton brokerage firm of J. H. Parker & Co., later named Springs & Co.
In 1925, Springs acquired the vintage structures at 13 through 19 West 47th Street and commissioned architect Walter M. Mason to design an 18-story brick and stone office building on the site. Called the Springs Building, it was completed in 1927 at a cost of $1 million--about 18 times that much in 2025 terms. Mason's Renaissance Revival-style structure looked as much as a luxury hotel as a business building. A glorious succession of setbacks combined with stone balustrades, balconies and octagonal towers flanking a three-story gable created an imposing whole.
The original tenants were varied. Among the initial occupants were the headquarters of the Leather Vita Corporation which manufactured a leather cleaning and preservation compound; and Schanz, Inc. a men's tailoring firm.
New York Evening Post, December 1, 1927
Perhaps the first of the jewelers in the building was L. Heller & Son, Inc. The gem dealer had a branch in Paris and advertised to jewelry makers on March 2, 1927, "Large stones of fine quality, series of matched sizes for bracelets and other jewelry."
At the time of that ad, L. Heller & Son, Inc. was in the midst of major negotiations with the Soviet Union. Czarist Russia had mined some of the largest and best emeralds in the world from the Ural mountains. The mines sat idle following the Russian Revolution. On October 22, 1927, The New York Times reported, "The Russian Soviet Government, having disposed of the crown jewels and other treasures of the Czar's regime, is now seeking to raise money from capitalist countries." The article said that L. Heller & Son, Inc. had purchased "a concession on the famous Ural emerald mines" and "has already put the best part of $1,000,000 worth of Russian emeralds on the American market as a result of the deal." L. Heller & Son, Inc. agreed to supply cash and managing personnel to operate the mines jointly with the Soviet Government.
The building's tenant list continued to be varied. In 1929, Katherine M. H. Marshall, a sales agent for women's wear makers took part of the eighth floor; while Johnson Matthey & Co., Inc. a London-based precious metals firm, took the remainder of the floor. Also in the building were the construction and development firm Pentaboro Realty Corporation, and Janet Lewis's "book doctor" shop. Lewis started her business in 1908 when the wife of Richard Morris Hunt asked her "what to do about old French bindings she inherited," according to The New Yorker on March 29, 1930. The portrait painter began restoring antique bindings, including those in the libraries of J. P. Morgan.
Stone balustrades and decorative urns flank a panel announcing "Springs Building."
A interesting tenant at the time was Mortimer Montgomery Lee, head of the silk importing firm bearing his name, and the owner of the Hadley Silk Mills in Paterson, New Jersey. Born on May 24, 1846 in Farmington, Pennsylvania, he came to New York City in 1880 and joined the silk importing firm that would eventually become Mortimer M. Lee. A resident of Norwalk, Connecticut, Lee served as Mayor there from 1892 to 1895 and again in 1901 and '02. Despite the commute, he never missed a day at work in 45 years. On the afternoon of July 9, 1931, a coworker walked into Lee's office to find the 85-year-old dead at his desk.
Handling precious gems came with intrinsic danger. On November 5, 1931, 36-year-old Paul Krakowsky, a diamond dealer in the Springs Building, stumbled into the Williamsbridge Road police station in the Bronx with his hands tied with picture wire. He told officers that he was walking along Sixth Avenue between 52nd and 53rd Street with a satchel (called a "wallet") at 6:00 when "two or three men approached him, thrust him into a limousine and, after tying his hands, took the wallet containing the gems," as reported by The New York Times. He said they forced him onto the floor of the car and warned him against making any noise. They pushed him out of the automobile at Schurz and East Tremont Avenues in the Bronx. The kidnappers got away with $60,000 worth of unset diamonds--about $1.24 million today.
Paul Krakowsky was a partner in the diamond firm of Krakowsky Freres, which also had offices in Belgium, Antwerp and Paris. The firm owned its own diamond mine in British Guiana. Krakowsky's success in business was not equaled in his domestic life. In 1933 he and his wife, Ruth, separated "because of differences in temperament," as explained by Krakowsky's lawyer, Matthew M. Levy. Krakowsky moved into a suite in the Hotel St. Moritz while Ruth and the two children remained in the family's suburban home.
On the morning of March 8, 1934, Matthew M. Levy and a friend of Krakowsky, Jack Silberfeld (whose offices were in the same building as Levy's) received letters from the 39-year-old that said he "couldn't stand it any longer." Jack Silberfeld rushed to the St. Moritz. The New York Times reported, "His friend was found on the floor beside his bed with a pistol beside him." Krakowsky had fired two bullets into his head. The wounded man was taken to the Manhattan State Hospital on Ward's Island where he lingered for three months, finally dying on June 12.
Despite the numerous gems and jewelry firms on the tenant list, 15 West 47th Street continued to attract other types of businesses. Among them in the 1940s were the Medo Photo Supply Company, the Lockwood Trade Journal Company, the International Electronics Laboratories, and the New York State Commission for the Blind.
Fascinating tenants at the time were Eugene Shawl and his son, Alfred. Born in Poland in 1868, Eugene Shawl took his family to Germany in 1904. Alfred showed no interest in his father's jewelry business and pursued law. He graduated from the law school at Koenigsberg in 1922 and later was appointed an assistant district attorney for Koenigsberg and Marienwerer in East Prussia.
In 1932, the younger Shawl was assigned to prosecute several Nazis who killed two Communists who had infiltrated a Nazi meeting. The New York Times later recounted, "Several of the Nazis were sent to prison...On leaving the courtroom, [Baldur] von Schirach turned to Mr. Shawl and said: "I'll never forget you. You'll think of me, Mr. Attorney."
When Hitler took power, he disbarred all Jewish lawyers. The father and son fled to France where they established a small jewelry shop. They "made lapel watch cases--unusual pieces of new and functional design," said The Times. "And it wasn't long before [their] concern was shipping to all parts of the world."
When the Nazis entered France, and with Alfred "high on Hitler's extermination list," the Shawls fled to New York City. Their Norma Jewelry Corporation created what the younger Shawl called "heirloom pieces." The firm "revived the wearing of fob watches by women," according to The New York Times, which said on June 9, 1950 that Alfred, "believes that by making articles that can be disassembled, the same ornament may be adapted to six or eight difference uses." Norma Jewelry Corporation was still in the building on November 17, 1953 when Eugene Shawl died at the age of 85.
By 1957, the Springs Building was known as the West Side Jewelers Exchange. That year the building was the target of multiple robberies. When Marcus Schwartz, a partner in the diamond cutting firm Weisbrot & Schwartz, was robbed on August 22, The New York Times remarked, "It was the third incident of its kind in the exchange in less than a month."
At 8:10 that morning, Schwartz was opening his 17th-floor office when two men forced him inside and ordered him to open the safe. They tied him to a chair and fled with the equivalent of $334,000 today in finished diamonds. Schwartz was eventually freed by a building maintenance man who heard his shouts.
Diamond dealers in the building continued to be victims through the 1960s and '70s, but two incidents in particular shook the industry and the city. The first involved diamond dealer Henri Teichler, a tenant here who devised a devious scheme in the spring of 1965. He had watched and memorized the movements of another jeweler, Ben Mellen, who occupied a ground floor space across the street at 36 West 47th Street. In April, Teichler spoke with a mobster and told him he "wanted to hire two gunmen who knew what they were doing, men who had had experience in holdups," according to The New York Times. He told the racketeer he planned a half-million-dollar gem heist.
A few days later, the mobster introduced Teichler to two "hired gunmen." A week of preparation beginning on April 20 included Teichler's instructing them on Mellen's habits, and a dry-run with Teichler timing them with a stopwatch. On the night of the robbery, the gunmen were to grab Mellen's tray of diamonds, throw a smoke bomb down the stairs where guards were stationed at the vault, then shoot tear gas at Mellen and push him down the stairs.
That night, Teichler waited in a hotel room for the thugs to return. Six detectives, instead, walked in and arrested him. The gunmen he hired were undercover detectives, put on the case when the mobster Teichler originally contacted went to authorities.
Diamond cutter Schlomo Tal, an Israeli citizen, had an office here on the 15th Floor. At 5:30 on the afternoon of September 20, 1977, diamond broker Pinchos Jaroslawicz left the Diamond Dealers' Club at 30 West 47th Street for an appointment with Tal, but according to him, Jaroslawicz never arrived.
Days later, there was still no trace of the 20-year-old broker who had reportedly been carrying as much as $1 million worth of gems. Foul play was suspected, police telling reporters that Jaraslawicz "had a good reputation in the diamond district and that it was very unlikely that he left of his own accord."
The mystery deepened when Shlomo Tal left home in Plainview, Long Island on Sunday morning September 25, telling his wife he was going to the office. Now he, too, went missing. Two days later, Detective Sgt. Robert Young said, "right now, we're treating this as a coincidence--a very strange coincidence." Investigators checked the West 47th Street office and found the door unlocked and a small window broken.
Then, on September 28, police discovered Tal sleeping in his wife's car in Queens. He told them that he had been hiding out from murderers and took them to his office at 15 West 47th Street. There, under a desk was Jaroslawicz's body, wrapped in plastic and stuffed into an air conditioner box. An autopsy, according to The New York Times, showed that the broker "died of head injuries and asphyxiation after a plastic bag was put over his head."
Tal recounted a incredible series of events. He said that after Jaroslawicz arrived on September 20, two masked men barged in, struck the broker on the head and forced Tal to wrap and cram the still-living body into the box. He said he did not notify police because he feared the murderers would harm his family. Then, when he left home on September 25, the same criminals abducted him. "He said the two drove him around Nassau County, Brooklyn and Queens for most of three days, spending one night at a motel. On Tuesday night, he said, the men gave him something to drink--he thought it contained 'a drug potion,'" reported The Times. Chief of Detectives John L. Keenan said, "We are certainly not accepting his story or any story at face value."
More than a year later, on November 9, 1978, Schlomo Tal was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for the murder of Pinchos Jaroslawicz. Tal continued to insist he was innocent.
The building still held tenants not related to jewelry or gems into the 21st century. Included was the office of photojournalist John G. Morris. Beginning his career in 1938, he was Life magazine's picture editor from 1938 to 1945, was photograph editor of the Ladies' Home Journal and Magnum's Photos, and the picture editor of the Washington Post and The New York Times, as well as holding other impressive positions.
Known today as The Exchange, Walter M. Mason's handsome limestone and brick building is as impressive as the history that has played out inside it.
photographs by Sean Khorsandi
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